The Sixteen Burdens (15 page)

“Does your cat know that?”

The man’s lips curled into a smile.

“Sasha has a taste for flesh. And she seems sweet on you.”

“Yeah, I’m the cat’s pajamas.”

The man lunged and Gray scuttled backward, stumbling into the library. The panther pursued him. Gray ducked behind a marble pillar, putting the heavy piece of stone between him and the animal. As soon as the panther got close Gray pushed the column over. The cat was fast, though, and darted away just as it came crashing down.

Gray kicked over the next pillar, but the cat batted it away. He only seemed to be making it angry.

“Chito, throw a pillar at it!”

Panchito was bounding down the stairs.

“I can’t! I can only throw little things.”

“
Now
you tell me.”

Panchito raised a brooch to fling at the panther, but the man cracked his whip and wrapped it around Panchito’s neck, pulling him down. The man stepped on Panchito’s neck to hold him down.

“Ow! Ya jerk!”

Gray backed up and found himself in a corner. The panther leapt at him, and Gray could do nothing but cover his head and crouch. He felt the animal slam him into the floor, felt teeth sink deep into the meaty part of his shoulder. Its breath smelled like rotten flesh.

With a closed fist Gray punched wildly and hit the panther in its eye. The beast recoiled and roared furiously. It dug the claws of one paw into Gray’s chest. Gray was too terrified to scream. The panther raised its other paw to swipe at Gray’s face. Gray clenched his eyes shut.

The attack didn’t come.

Gray felt something wet and coarse on his face. He opened his eyes and found the panther licking him—a sandpaper tongue bath.

Elsie had the panther firmly by the tail, and a kind of glittery pink swirl of energy surrounded it.

The panther purred as if it were an alley cat Gray had just given a bowl of warm milk.

He reluctantly petted it.

“I didn’t know you could do that to animals,” Gray said.

“Neither did I,” she said.

The panther’s handler cracked his whip and it lashed Elsie on the hand. She cried out and let go of the panther’s tail.

“Sasha!” the man yelled.

The pink haze around the panther evaporated.

“Sasha!” he yelled again, this time whipping the cat on its hindquarters.

The cat turned toward the man and cowered.

Elsie reached out and touched the panther’s back paw with one finger. The cat swirled with red. It growled.

“Get them!” the man shouted.

But the cat’s anger was focused on him. It pounced.

“Let’s go!” Elsie said.

She grabbed Gray by the hand, pulling him up and into the foyer.

“Sasha, no! It’s me!”

But the panther was in a rage, more force of nature than animal. She clawed her handler’s abdomen and bit down onto the side of his neck. The man shrieked, an inhuman sound that sent a shiver down Gray’s spine.

“Come on!”

Panchito grabbed Gray by the arm and pulled him toward the door. They stepped past Sugar, who was beginning to stir. Gray wondered whether she would come around in time to escape. Elsie was right behind them with Lulu, who was grasping her older sister’s hand like a lifeline.

They slammed the door shut and stumbled out into the late morning sun. The green lawn was too bright, too vivid. The pink and yellow flowers made Gray nauseated.

“What about the housekeeper?”

“When I first heard the crash, I jolted her with fear by accident,” Elsie said. “She ran out the back door as fast as her legs could carry her.”

They ran out the front gate and down the street. They didn’t stop until the roof of Chaplin’s mansion was in sight. All of them slowed to catch their breath. Lulu was between Gray and Elsie. Panchito trailed behind them alone.

It was silent up there in the hills. The sky was clear and calm. Birds chirped the way birds did when they hadn’t just seen a man mauled to death.

“You risked your life for me,” Gray said to Elsie. He noticed her dress was covered in flour.

Elsie wrinkled her nose and smiled.

“Damsel in distress.”

Gray scowled.

“You shouldn’t have.”

He hated feeling indebted to anyone. Now he owed her. Now he was somehow obligated to her.

Elsie must have sensed his resentment.

“You kept my sister safe, so we’re even, OK?”

Gray tensed a moment when he felt a hand slip into his. It was Lulu. She grasped him casually, one hand in his and one hand in her sister’s. It felt strange.

“We’d better get you home.”

They walked up Chaplin’s steep driveway. Elsie looked at Gray’s torn shirt, his bloody chest.

“What will you tell Mr. Chaplin?”

“I’ll tell him the truth,” Gray said. “That we looked for the Eye, and that it wasn’t there.”

He looked eastward, along the hundreds of tiny houses dotting the hillside, past the Hollywoodland sign, until he spotted a tiny, dome-shaped building on top of a peak.

What I won’t tell him, or any of you, is that I know where it is.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

W
HEN
THEY
WALKED
up Chaplin’s long driveway, they encountered Henrietta, Chaplin’s assistant, waiting impatiently by her car. She was tapping her foot to the beat of passing time.

“Get in, all of you. We’re late.”

Henrietta was too preoccupied with schedules to notice or care about the stripes of black blood drying on Gray’s shirt. He ran into the house just long enough to bandage himself and change into a pink button-down shirt and the blue blazer that matched his pants.

Henrietta had a Chevrolet Mercury—the most standard, basic model in the line. It was solid, reliable, no frills.

Just like Henrietta.

She drove, however, as if she owned an Alfa Romeo. As they approached Elsie’s dormitory, Gray wondered if Henrietta was going to have the girls tuck-and-roll out of the car.

“I’ve talked with one of the dancers you live with,” Henrietta said, screeching to a halt. “She is happy to cover for your absence last night, now that she owns a new dress. Now out.”

Elsie tried to thank her but Henrietta just shooed the girls out of the car.

“You too,” she said to Panchito.

“Don’t I get a ride home?” he asked.

She pulled a quarter from her purse and gave it to him.

“Take the red car.”

Panchito climbed out and muttered a complaint that was lost in the screech of Henrietta’s tires.

She drove to the United Artists studio lot without another word. They parked on the far side of the backlot, and Gray had to practically jog to keep up with her. She flashed a badge to security and signed Gray in before the guard could even say “good afternoon.”

“Walk straight through the backlot and you’ll hit the main building,” she said.

“You’re not coming?”

“No,” she said. “I have a schedule to keep.”

And Godspeed to any sap who gets in the way of it.

Gray walked through the backlot, filled with dozens of old movie sets. There was a grubby Western general store to Gray’s right, and an entire block of modern-day New York to his left—although the skyscrapers abruptly ended after the third story. In the distance Gray saw the gold dome of some Middle Eastern castle. It was as if the entire world had been squished together in just a few acres.

Straight ahead was a hill of boulders with some strange trees and plants growing on it. Crew members were buzzing around it, moving equipment and tweaking cameras. Gray spotted D.W. Griffith on the outskirts talking with some cameramen. He waited until they were done.

“What’s this for?”

“Hello, Gray,” he said. “It’s a prehistoric adventure called
One Million B.C.
It’s basically
Romeo and Juliet
in loincloths.”

“Where’s Mr. Chaplin?”

“I thought he was with you,” Griffith said.

A stocky man with features like a bulldog stomped up to Griffith.

“You can’t put dialogue in this film!”

“It’s nothing but grunts and cries, Hal,” Griffith said. “We didn’t enter the world of sound just to hear a man belch.”

“They’re cavemen,” Hal said. “You want them spouting Shakespeare? This is my film. I have the final word.”

“The final word is that this film is going to flop,” Griffith said. He never raised his voice but he was clearly exasperated. He turned to Gray.

“You’ll have to excuse me. Without Mary and Charlie to help I’m a bit overwhelmed with personnel management. Try his office.”

Griffith turned back to Hal.

“Let’s take twenty minutes and two fingers. We’ll see if some time with Mr. Hendricks can offer up a compromise.”

Gray entered the main building and went up to Chaplin’s office. He knocked on the door but no one answered. It was locked. Down the hall he heard the slow, breezy sound of an orchestra. He followed the music to a corner office even grander than Chaplin’s. It was decorated in a Moroccan theme, with colorful pillows and purple drapes with gold Arabesque embroidery.

Gray saw Douglas Fairbanks dancing a slow waltz by himself, barefoot on a thick Oriental rug. The song on the record player was a duet Gray recognized called “Thanks For the Memory.”

Fairbanks turned and saw Gray at the door. The man looked morose.

“Forgive me,” he said, turning away to wipe a tear from his eye. “Mary loved this song.”

Gray backed away from the door. Tears were like head lice: You got them time to time, but you didn’t go sharing them if you could avoid it.

“Wait,” Fairbanks said. “Please, come sit.”

He motioned to a pair of large, gold-fringed pillows. Gray sat down.

“I should apologize for my outburst the other day,” Fairbanks said. “It was unbecoming of me and unfair to you. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Fairbanks looked ten years older than before. He had dark, puffy circles under his eyes.

“Your mother and I, we once loved each other very much. But we didn’t always treat each other well. When we were married we got caught up in the romance of it all. America’s Sweetheart marrying America’s Hero. The problem was, we were both used to being adored, so neither of us was very good at giving adoration.”

He leaned forward and looked Gray squarely in the eye.

“When you were born, I encouraged Mary to send you away,” Fairbanks said. “I won’t deny that. We were trying to save our marriage, and it seemed like the only solution to erase all memory of…Houdini.”

His lips pulled tightly as if having swallowed a bitter pill.

“You can resent me for it and I’d understand. You can ignore me all you want. But hating me won’t help us get your mother back any faster.”

Gray wanted to resent Fairbanks, but he couldn’t. The man had been betrayed by his mother and wronged by his father. If anything, he felt a kind of kinship with him.

“It ain’t your fault, I guess,” Gray said.

Fairbanks put a hand to his chest.

“I’m so relieved to hear you say that! It has weighed heavily on me, now more than ever.”

Fairbanks’s whole demeanor shifted. He seemed so relaxed, so natural, as if he and Gray had been good friends for years.

“I made a film of
Robin Hood
. You’re too young to have seen it.”

He nodded to the opposite wall, which had a framed poster of the movie. Fairbanks, in green tights and Robin Hood’s trademark red archer cap, was crouched on the branch of a mighty oak tree, his giant bow drawn.

“I did see it!” Gray said. “There was a re-release a few years back. You were much better than Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood. He was good too, but he had the advantage of talking.”

The last word made Fairbanks cringe.

“
Talking
is what actors these days use to replace
acting
.”

Gray nodded emphatically. It was so easy to agree with Douglas Fairbanks.

“As you know, then, Robin Hood had a sidekick named Little John. He is Robin Hood’s second in command and his most trusted friend. On his most dangerous missions, Little John is the only person Robin Hood takes with him. And when Robin Hood was captured by his worst enemy, the Sheriff of Nottingham, it’s Little John who rallies the Merry Men and helps to plan Robin Hood’s rescue.”

Fairbanks paused and gave Gray a thorough once over. Gray had the sensation of having stumbled unaware into a job interview.

“You and I find ourselves on a dangerous mission of our own,” Fairbanks said. “One to save your mother from a man fueled by violent strength. Although Mary and I are no longer married, she means the world to me, and I will do whatever it takes to get her to safety. But I can’t do it on my own. I need someone I can rely on.”

Here Fairbanks cast a look at Gray, who stared at the movie poster.

“Gray, can I trust you to be my Little John?”

It would have sounded like a silly proposition coming out of anyone but Fairbanks. He said it with such conviction that it captured all the spirit and romance of a grand adventure.

“What about Mr. Chaplin?”

“Charlie?” Fairbanks said, “He’s my best friend, but the man lives in a comedy—when what we’re dealing with is a drama. Where is he now? Where was he last night when I was scouring the city, asking every taxi driver and nightclub owner in town if he had heard any gossip about the circus?”

Gray didn’t want to confess that he and Chaplin were both at home watching a movie. At Lulu’s behest, Chaplin had set up a projector and screened his personal reel of
White Zombie
.

“Charlie has trouble taking anything seriously,” Fairbanks said. “We can’t blame him, being who he is. He can’t take action when action is what’s called for!”

Gray agreed that Chaplin lacked the urgency required to save his mother. He wanted to be more like Fairbanks: a man of action.

“What can I do?”

Fairbanks snapped his fingers as if he had only just thought of it.

“Newton’s Eye. Do you know where it is?”

Gray shook his head. Fairbanks frowned, and suddenly the whole world was disappointed in him.

“We’ll find it,” Fairbanks said. “We have to. It’s our only bargaining chip. Without it, we’ll never get her back.”

“Mrs. Pickford said we can’t give ’em the Eye,” Gray said. “That I should let her die rather than hand the Eye over to them.”

Fairbanks laughed.

“She’s so melodramatic. Of course we won’t give them the Eye. We’ll use it as bait to draw them out. But first we need to find it.”

Fairbanks crossed his legs and touched his fingertips together.

“Do you have any hunches? Any clues Mary gave you? You were the last one she talked to before they took her.”

Gray had his hunch, but he didn’t want to tell Fairbanks and then end up being wrong. It would only disappoint him more.

“We searched her home this morning but it wasn’t there.”

“Of course it’s not at Pickfair,” Fairbanks said. “Remember, I used to live there. I helped build the place.”

Fairbanks sighed, as if he were a champion tennis player who had just been paired in doubles with a novice. His eyes drifted back to Gray.

“What do you mean ‘we’ searched the place?”

“Hm?”

“You said ‘we’ searched it.”

“Oh. Panchito and I. And some girl named Elsie.”

“Elsie Avery? A darling young woman. Quite pretty, don’t you think? When Chaplin first spotted her, he brought me to the casino to observe her. What is her gift, now? A talent for sensing emotion? I’m sure that’s useful…somehow.”

The way he said it seemed to suggest that it wasn’t much use at all.

“It is!” Gray said. “People can’t lie or hide their feelings from her.”

Fairbanks raised an eyebrow.

“They can’t hide their feelings? Hypothetically, what would happen if you took a fancy to her?”

Gray blushed and shrugged. That wasn’t something that had even crossed his mind.

Fairbanks broke into a conspiratorial smile.

“I’ll make you a deal. You keep our plan a secret from Charlie, and I’ll keep your secret from Elsie. Agreed?”

Gray nodded and they shook on it. He was glad they had an agreement, even if he wasn’t sure what secrets they were keeping.